Patricia K. Felkins is an associate professor in the School of Communication and a founding director for the Advertising and Public Relations program. She teaches Public Service Communication, Organizational Communication and Communication Consulting. The liaison between the Communication Department and the School of Business, she teaches Public Relations in the Integrated Marketing Communication program for the Graduate School of Business and is the adviser for Loyola's Chapter of International Association for Business Communicators.

Dr. Felkins joined the Department of Communication faculty in 1978. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.

Dr. Felkins' work does not stop at Loyola. Much of her current work is with leadership, issues management, public relations and community building for nonprofit organizations. She is a senior consultant with the BJ Chakiris Corp., an organizational development group. Dr. Felkins is also vice president and co-founder of the Africa Circle of Hope Foundation, which supports projects for women and children impacted by AIDS and poverty and founder of Africa Dialogue Group at Loyola.

She is currently working on a book titled Emerging Technology Leadership: Engaging Community, Creating New Work, and Changing the World.  Published in 2002 her book Community at Work: Creating and Celebrating Community in Organizational Life explores community relations, cooperative choices and actions, responsiveness and accountability, and the relationships that link individual, group, and organizational goals.

Her work over the past six years has had a global focus, especially in East Africa with health care, education, and economic development programs for women and children. She spends two to three months in Kenya each year conducting research and consulting. In summer 2007 Dr. Felkins led an international team to establish a community technology center and training program for under served populations in rural Meru, Kenya, part of a technology and entrepreneurship project in collaboration with Microsoft Corp.